jmcannon

Hey thanks! That's really helpful. Noted!

You can jump ahead in any deck by holding the red trash button. Since the decks are ordered by frequency, you could probably jump ahead 1000-1500 words and then just get rid of any words you already know.

Otherwise, you can always just create your own cards. If you do that on top of one of CleverDeck's decks, it will autocomplete if we've already made a card for a particular word.

Thank you!

Right now, the import is pretty rudimentary. It just parses and creates a new deck.

I've been working on - and now will redouble my efforts based on the feedback here - a web app that will make creation and import much easier and flexible.

Thank you! No - right now, CleverDeck doesn't even have any deck sharing functionality. Whatever you make is yours alone.

What do you think is a fair price for one of our 3000 word language decks? In the previous iteration of the app, people showed themselves willing to pay $15.

Repeat revenue makes it easier for me to make a living as an indie dev, so I wanted to give this model a try while charging what I think is a fair price. I'll keep an open mind about it and adjust if enough people want it. Appreciate the feedback!

We recorded it ourselves by interviewing and hiring local to us.

Sorry, I meant bandwidth metaphorically. I'm an indie dev, so I just don't have a ton of time to divide across so many things that need to get done.

Working on it! There's no really good way to do this on the device, so I need to build out a web app. But this is the number one most requested feature, so stay tuned :)

Thanks for the advice.

I don't necessarily feel like I have nailed the business model right now - I'll see how it goes. More broadly speaking, I think the jury is still out on subscriptions in productivity apps. Everyone is trying to get away with it now - and it is very attractive as an indie developer.

For what its worth, I feel similarly to you. I buy year long auto-renewable subscriptions, immediately cancel them, and then resubscribe if I'm still using them next year.

Pasting my response from below:

Two things, I think.

First, I was a long time power user of Anki and don't mean to disparage it, but I think CleverDeck has a much better user experience and design.

Second, we've spent a tremendous amount of time putting together high quality frequency lists (mostly for languages right now) that incorporate professional imagery, native-speaker audio, transliterations (where relevant), and example sentences. Usually, making or piecing together your own decks and cards is the most time-consuming part of using an SRS - and user content is often of dubious quality. In terms of the spaced repetition, though, CleverDeck and Anki actually use the same algorithm.

Thanks a ton for the feedback - very useful. And thank you for the bug report - I'll check that out (my initial guess is that you don't have the CARD DISPLAY set to play audio on that side right now - which is itself a problem for being confusing).

Re: monetization. It's freemium right now - 100 cards to try out the app, then three bucks per month for access to all the decks we've made. Completely free to create your own content.

I'll look into Forvo integration - that sounds useful.

Shoot me an email at justin@cleverdeck.com with your email address and I'll make sure you get notified :)

Thank you!

I probably don't have the bandwidth to support a full-blown API, but making a web app that makes bulk creation faster is a priority.

Yeah, my mental model for the app has been that the main list of decks "lives" in the center, the settings live on the right, and the actual studying happens on the left (you'll see that it also slides in from the left - mirroring the exit animation).

You're not the first to mention this, though. I should probably change it.

Nothing fancy - objective C with core data. The backend is Django + AWS.

Completely local unless you make an account and turn on sync. In that case, they'll be stored remotely for the purpose of syncing between devices.

You can make your own decks and cards, and import decks from Quizlet or csv.

I'm currently working on an accompanying web app that will allow importing of lists from more services and allow for faster bulk content creation.

Me, too :(

It's next on the agenda.

Yeah, yours is the second comment along these lines and I think you're right.

My thinking was that I wanted to differentiate it from the very gamey branding of apps like Memrise and Duolingo. "Spaced repetition system" sounds more serious, more academic - and I do want people to get the impression that CleverDeck takes the spaced repetition implementation as seriously as Anki. I think I can probably still do that while being more clear - thanks for the feedback.

Not right now - I quite like using it as a universal app on my iPad. To be honest, I'm not sure how I could significantly improve it with all the extra space.

I mean, yeah, Quizlet is massive. I'll never compete with their user-content library and community. They've never had a particular focus on spaced repetition, so I don't really see them as a big competitor.

You can change most variables in CleverDeck's algorithm (the same one Anki uses), as well.

If open source and super customizability are important to you, Anki is probably a better choice for you. For many people, I think having the ready-made decks and a nice interface is more important. And CleverDeck does have some features, like three-sided cards and siblings, that I personally loved in Anki.

Thank you! That's a good idea for a feature :)

Pasting my response from below:

Two things, I think.

First, I was a long time power user of Anki and don't mean to disparage it, but I think CleverDeck has a much better user experience and design.

Second, we've spent a tremendous amount of time putting together high quality frequency lists (mostly for languages right now) that incorporate professional imagery, native-speaker audio, transliterations (where relevant), and example sentences. Usually, making or piecing together your own decks and cards is the most time-consuming part of using an SRS - and user content is often of dubious quality.

In terms of the spaced repetition, though, CleverDeck and Anki actually use the same algorithm.

Yeah, I think you're right. The tagline can be improved.

I'm kind of doing a balancing act right now - I've built out CleverDeck to be a fully functional SRS that could be used for any subject, and I want to convey that. At the same time, people primarily use it for learning languages and I also want to communicate my dedication and efforts toward that particular niche.

I'm sure I can do a better job with messaging. Thanks for your feedback.

Hmm, I wonder if there's some confusion here. Cards can be swiped left, up, or right - but not from top to bottom. Otherwise, thanks for the feedback!

Two things, I think.

First, I was a long time power user of Anki and don't mean to disparage it, but I think CleverDeck has a much better user experience and design.

Second, we've spent a tremendous amount of time putting together high quality frequency lists (mostly for languages right now) that incorporate professional imagery, native-speaker audio, transliterations (where relevant), and example sentences. Usually, making or piecing together your own decks and cards is the most time-consuming part of using an SRS - and user content is often of dubious quality.

In terms of the spaced repetition, though, CleverDeck and Anki actually use the same algorithm.

Hi HN! I first posted CleverDeck about 2.5 years ago and received a lot of support and encouragement from the community. Since then, I've built it out into a more general purpose spaced repetition system and added seven new 3000-word frequency lists for major languages. I launched the big update today (http://cleverdeck.com/blog) and would love to once again submit it here for feedback. Cheers!

Hi HN - I originally released CleverDeck about 2.5 years ago and everyone here was very supportive. At the time, I pushed out four different apps - one for French, German, Turkish, and Spanish. After seeing people get a lot out of the app over the last couple years, I just released a huge update that combines everything into a single app and aims to be a more broadly useful spaced repetition system.

I know spaced repetition is of interest to the community, so I wanted to share. Feedback or comments very welcome!

Interestingly, Kyle (founder of Cruise) was intimately involved with the DARPA Grand Challenge at MIT when the goal was to engineer a self-driving car.